Ethernet names...

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Wed Oct 3 07:48:58 CDT 2018


    > From: Eric Smith

    > 3 Mbps was sometimes referred to as experimental Ethernet, but AFAIK
    > the only official name was "Ethernet".
    > The best way to refer to it is probably "3 Mbps Ethernet".

I was trying to remember what we called it at MIT (which had one), but my
memory was hazy, so I want back and looked at the sources for the packet
switch I wrote (which supported the first Ethernet, before the 10Mbit version
even came out), and I found (slightly to my suprise) that it was "3Mbit
Experimental Ethernet", or just plain "Exerimental Ethernet". (Of course, that
was just MIT - other sites may have had different terminology.) No doubt we
renamed it once the 10Mbit version showed up - I can probably search for early
versions of the code to confirm this, if anyone cares. Anyway, I'd vote for
the latter, short name.

    > From: Bill Degnan

    > See where wizards stay up lote by Katie Halner and matthew lyon.

Interesting! It looks (from the Notes) like this was gleaned from an interview
with Metcalfe, and she was _very_ careful (I helped her with the technical
details - you can find me in the Acks), so I'd tend to believe it.

My _guess_ is that was his early, 'in his head' name for the thing, and when
they set out to actually build it, it was re-named 'Ethernet' (as Al's memo
search seems to indicate).

	Noel


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